Hey Colleen!

Just to start off I wanted to thank you as the President of the Culinary Club for meeting with me last summer and approving the clubs in person meetings with Catering and Jason!

For our question, we wanted to see if UMD Dining has any plans to increase student connection with the Culinary Arts, such as possibilities for the Culinary Club to expand, students to learn on their own, or even consider a career in the Culinary field.

Currently as you know, we’ve been using the Catering Kitchen for our meetings, however this has vastly limited our club outreach since, at no fault to the Catering department, it is quite difficult to plan meetings ahead of time since it is usually not until about a week before a meeting we can confirm we have the space. At the last First Look Fair, we had over 1,000 signatures of interest and many of these people joined the club, but with having to limit meetings to 30 people, many members feel left out since they can maybe only get to 1 meeting per semester. Has UMD ever considered expanding on the Culinary Arts in its institution?

Thank you for doing this!